


as proof of my love, i cry you a rainbow

by Sunshine712



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Crying, Light Angst, Love Confessions, M/M, Metaphors, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Pining, Star tear disease AU, soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:34:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27628235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sunshine712/pseuds/Sunshine712
Summary: Kiyoomi's love can be represented by a jar of stars; filled to the brim, and only for Atsumu.
Relationships: Miya Atsumu/Sakusa Kiyoomi
Comments: 12
Kudos: 173





	as proof of my love, i cry you a rainbow

**Author's Note:**

> I originally posted this on twitter, but thought it would also be nice to put it here too, so more people can see it :D  
> (And also because I posted on twitter using photos and it's understandable if the scrolling through photos in a thread is annoying)

"Omi-san, smile!" Kiyoomi turns his head just in time to see Hinata snapping a selfie of them, the bright flash blinding him for a second. He's pretty sure he's blurry in the photo. Not that he really cares.

The beat of the music thumps rhythmically, overlayed by the constant chatter of other patrons, which has only increased in volume in the duration that the team has been at the bar. The music is annoying, and the lights are no better; spotlights of red, blue, green, yellow shining down from the ceiling and bouncing off the disco ball, making his vision a disorientating mix of colours.

It's all starting to give him a headache, but the worst—god, the absolute worst part of it all—is that even the sea of bodies flooding the dance pit and the coloured lights couldn't mask the view of platinum blonde hair from his eyes.

There were so many people between them, yet Kiyoomi could still see, as clear as day, Atsumu standing in the dance pit, lips attached to the neck of another man. Kiyoomi's been drinking the same glass of beer all night, but he still feels his stomach lurch in discomfort. And when the crowd parts just in time for him to see hands slipping under shirts, he promptly stands up. "I'm leaving."

He makes it all the way back to his apartment, takes a shower, and settles under his covers before the tears come.

It's stupid, he thinks, scrubbing the teardrops away furiously. He had no reason to be upset.

No reason, other than the fact that he likes Atsumu.

Stupid, rude, arrogant, annoying Atsumu, who's just about as flirty as they come, but also passionate, skilled, charismatic, funny, and way out of his league. Damn it, why does it have to be him of all people?

He's shocked out of his mental rant by the sound of faint tinkling and his finger brushing against something solid. He sits up, and stares as little stars drop onto his bedsheets. He blinks, and watches as another tear falls from his left eye, slipping down his cheek and solidifying into a star as it falls. He catches it in his palm, turquoise green and shiny, smaller than the fingernail on his index finger.

Star tears.

He huffs out a soft laugh. If he had any hope of Atsumu liking him back, well, it's utterly, totally, and completely gone now.

The tiny star in his hand is proof of his unrequited love.

Like the stars have opened a floodgate, Kiyoomi finds himself crying over Atsumu the next night, and the night after that, and after that, until he simply cried himself to sleep every night, waking up to a pile of twinkling emerald-coloured stars on his pillow.

Until one day, he opens his wardrobe and finds half of his Itachiyama jacket grey and colourless. With trembling fingers he throws open the curtains, and finds the trees outside to be in the same state.

Loss of colour.

An effect of the colourful stars formed by his tears.

He arrives at practice and Atsumu's already there, pulling a grey shirt over his head. The blonde notices him staring, and grimaces. "Yea, I know it's ugly. But I forgot to do laundry and this was the only shirt I had around. The colour is awful."

He picks at his shirt and Kiyoomi realises belatedly that his shirt wasn't grey, but rather green. He tries to imagine what shade it might be.

Would it be as bright as his own high school uniform? But even if it was, it couldn't be as bright as Atsumu, right?

Or is it a dark moss green, the kind that looked dull? But even so, it would still look good on Atsumu, right?

There's a lump in his throat as he realises he'll never get a chance to find out. "Never wear green again. It's ugly" But that's untrue. Atsumu is never ugly.

It's just, for as long as possible, he wants Atsumu to be colourful.

It's blue he loses next, and he mourns the loss as he joins Atsumu for a morning jog one day, finishing their route on the benches outside the gym entrance. "The sky's beautiful today, don't you think?"

Kiyoomi looks up with him, staring at the endless stretch of grey, and answers truthfully, "Yeah". The sky is beautiful, because it’s Atsumu he’s looking at it with.

He thinks about how his and Atsumu's worlds must be so different now. How Atsumu's world must be as vibrant and lively as his is dull and mundane. He thinks maybe it's for the better then, that Atsumu doesn't return his feelings, because what did Kiyoomi have to offer to this glowing boy beside him that will make him glow brighter?

When he wakes up to glittering pink stars on his pillowcase, Kiyoomi realises some colours are more difficult to part with than others.

It's a day off today, and Atsumu's invited him out to lunch, because "You're always holed up in your apartment, I wanna see you outside of practice, you know!"

So he agrees, and makes his way to the cafe Atsumu's picked. It’s spacious, with generous room between tables for quiet conversation. The smell of coffee and baked goods waft through the air, and if that wasn’t enough to entice a customer, the pastries themselves are lined neatly in a glass display by the register, inviting hungry customers to pick one, or maybe a few. But as enticing as they are, Kiyoomi’s attention is stolen by Atsumu, sitting at a seat by the window, dressed in a simple shirt and jeans and looking as gorgeous as he's ever been.

They chat over sandwiches and coffee, and Kiyoomi is reminded once again why he fell for Atsumu in the first place. Who wouldn't, when his honey-brown eyes shine with passion even though all he was talking about was a TV series, his hands mirroring that passion in their movements as he recounts the latest episode of a show Kiyoomi has never watched, but now knows fine details about.

Kiyoomi may have been a bit obvious, propping his head on his hand and staring blatantly, taking in everything he could from the boy in front of him.

He only stops when Atsumu cuts off mid-sentence and looks at him uncertainly. "Uh, Omi-kun? Am I boring you?"

"No," Kiyoomi answers, and because he can't stop himself, adds, "You're just beautiful, that's all."

When his tears had first started glowing pink in the darkness of his room, he'd thought it was a colour he could live without. But now he wishes he could keep it forever, because it's now that Atsumu blushes, a soft rosy pink dusting his cheeks, warm spots of colour appearing on his fair cheeks as his eyes widen for a moment before he smiles, a little shy. Kiyoomi takes it all in, burning the image into his mind to be kept forever.

Later, he wonders if that could've been a date, if that's what dating Atsumu would feel like, and tries to stop himself from crying more rosy pink stars, because he couldn't bear to never see the colour of Atsumu's blushing cheeks again.

Inevitably he loses pink too, but Kiyoomi thanks the stars for leaving him with such a perfect memory before taking the colour from him.

Gradually he loses red, orange, and purple, and like blue he mourns those with the sight of the sky, watching a grey sunset with Atsumu by his side, because he's agreed to accompany him on his shopping trip for his upcoming date. How fitting it is, Kiyoomi thinks, to watch a grey sunset with your unrequited love.

He's heard that star tear disease was meant to be a protective mechanism; the stars take away the colours of the world in an attempt to wash out the person's feelings. The person's left with a grey world, because if their world is bleak and colourless, perhaps the person won't fall in love again, only to have their feelings be unrequited.

But if losing his colours is meant to protect him, then why does he feel worse than before?

Because when the stars become brown his heart twists with pain, for in reality it's Atsumu's shining eyes that he loses when those tears fall and take the shades of brown with them.

In the end, it's yellow he's left with, and Kiyoomi treasures it along with the sight of Atsumu's fluffy blonde hair.

He's glad yellow stayed until the end, because from the very first time he saw him to now, it has always been Atsumu's hair that caught his attention first whenever he entered his sight.

Atsumu's birthday approaches and Kiyoomi invites him to his apartment in the afternoon, hoping he might be important enough to Atsumu to steal a bit of his time from his friends and family on his special day.

Atsumu turns up at the exact time they decided, and Kiyoomi's heart stutters a little at the fact that he might be special enough, that out of all the people who wanted to celebrate his birthday with him, Atsumu had chosen him to spend his time with.

The blonde flops onto his couch like he owns it, grinning happily. "What's the plan Omi-kun?"

Kiyoomi shrugs. "Your birthday, your choice."

He watches Atsumu glance around his apartment, eyes landing on the stack of board games on his shelf. "Let's play games, Omi-Omi!"

They play a couple card games and board games, all of which Kiyoomi loses, because the majority of his focus is on the way sunlight enters through his windows and shines upon Atsumu's hair, still the lovely, lovely blonde he likes to look at every moment that he could.

"Omi-Omi? You're zoning out on me again!" Atsumu pouts, and Kiyoomi's heart skips a beat.

In the end Atsumu wins the games, and asks for his birthday gift as a reward. So Kiyoomi enters his room and picks up the gift, heart thumping wildly as he steps back out into the living room.

He keeps the gift hidden behind his back until he's back at the low table, then slowly presents it to Atsumu. Atsumu's eyes widen as his hands reach for the jar. "Omi..."

"It's my gift to you." Kiyoomi says softly, "They're—"

"Star tears." Atsumu finishes the sentence for him, expression still one of shock as he pulls the jar towards him.

"Yeah." Kiyoomi murmurs, looking at the jar instead of the boy in front of him. It's full of star tears of every colour, which Kiyoomi had kept from the very beginning. Each and every star tear that he'd cried, he had picked up and kept safe in the jar. He'd thought long and hard for the weeks coming up to this day, trying to figure out what he could give to Atsumu. In the end he decides there's nothing money will buy that can live up to Atsumu's importance in his mind. The world around him has gone almost completely grey, but the stars still shine with vibrant hues, a reminder of the feelings that he held, and still holds. And what better gift did he have to offer than his utmost love and devotion?

"Are they... for me?" Atsumu asks, eyes glossy.

"Yeah," Kiyoomi whispers. "Only you."

There's a sniffle, and Kiyoomi hears the faint tinkling sound he's become so familiar with. Shocked, he looks up to see grey stars falling from Atsumu's eyes. "Omi-kun," he sobs.

With a jolt Kiyoomi realises that Atsumu had recognised the stars as star tears as soon as he'd seen them, and not as folded paper stars. "Atsumu," he breathes.

Atsumu wipes his tears, still sobbing. "Omi-kun, I've loved you since our second year."

Kiyoomi reaches out and catches one of the stars, and realises it's not grey, but rather silver, shimmering faintly in his palm. "Since second year of..." He tries to take in what Atsumu's saying. "But you can see colours? You said your green shirt looked awful, you asked me if I thought the sky was beautiful."

Atsumu smiles wetly with a soft shake of his head. "I can't see it. They're all grey to me. But there's different shades of grey, Omi. Some colours are darker than others. I learnt to differentiate."

Kiyoomi thinks about Atsumu living years of his life without colour, pretending to be perfectly fine, and his heart clenches painfully. "I'm sorry."

"They say the star tears are meant to take your feelings away too, but I still love you so much, Omi-kun. I thought I'd never get a chance with you, which is why I had all those flings and casual dates. I wanted to move on from you, but all I've done is make you think I don't love you back." He cries harder, one hand cradling the jar of stars to his chest as the other tries to wipe away all the tears. Kiyoomi catches that hand, and pushes it away, swiping his own thumb under Atsumu's eyes.

He's met with only wetness, and realises that no more stars have fallen from Atsumu's eyes. Atsumu seems to have realised too, fingers touching his own cheek in awe. "Omi..."

"I love you. I love you I love you I love you." Kiyoomi cuts in, blurting out the words he's been wanting to say for the longest time. He shuffles so he's kneeling next to Atsumu instead of leaning over the table in between them and holds Atsumu's face in his hands. "I love you, Atsumu."

Atsumu sets down the jar and wraps both hands around Kiyoomi's neck to pull him closer, close enough that their lips brush and Kiyoomi feels as well as hears Atsumu whisper "I love you too, Kiyoomi."

Kiyoomi presses their lips together, feels one of Atsumu's hands grip onto his neck to hold him close as their lips meet, tentatively at first like they both can't believe this is really happening, then with more certainty because they have each other now and there isn't anything stopping them anymore.

When he pulls back Kiyoomi opens his eyes and is met with a sight he thought he'd lost: Atsumu's honey-brown eyes, pupils slightly dilated and swimming with love as he sniffles again. Kiyoomi takes in his pink lips and flushed cheeks, which he had thought he'd never get to see again, and feels like crying all over again. "You're so beautiful."

"So are you, Omi. So are you."

That night is the first night in months that Kiyoomi falls asleep with dry eyes. It's also the first time in his life that he falls asleep with Atsumu in his arms, cheek pressed against his chest and golden-blonde hair tickling his neck just a little bit.

The stars in the jar are clear now, perhaps because the colours have returned to where they came from, but they still shimmer with little gold sparkles, and Atsumu asks to keep them. "Your love is so beautiful, Omi."

Kiyoomi gives them to him, because his love had always been meant for Atsumu anyway. "They were always yours, whether you wanted them or not." He kisses Atsumu again. “I’m glad you want them though.”

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed reading this!
> 
> If you're interested in seeing my thoughts behind some of the world building, or you want to see the very nice image I found for promoting this fic (jokes), or you want to follow me on twitter, please head on over [ here](https://twitter.com/Sun_shine712/status/1329274687789023233) and scroll to the end of the thread :)


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